November 13 2024
By Minhoo Jeong
The human body contains 78 organs, but we tend to think of only a few as "major" organs—the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, and liver. Astoundingly, blood vessels—arteries, veins, and capillaries—are considered organs. Conventionally, textbooks refer to blood vessels as no more than roadways that deliver blood to help the "main" organs. With this perception, blood vessels are passive, subservient parts of the body.
However, the blood vessels do play an active role in nearly all life-threatening conditions. As a very simple example, stroke is regarded as not only a brain disorder but vascular disease that causes damage to brain function. Similarly, heart attack is not simply heart disease; it is vascular disorder leading to heart damage. Like all tumors, they require blood vessels to grow beyond a millimeter in size or to metastasize. Even preeclampsia, a potentially lethal pregnancy complication, is thought to arise from defective blood vessel development. Many of the chronic conditions that impose the greatest socioeconomic burdens globally, including diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and dementia, have also been linked to vascular dysfunction. In spite of all this, blood vessel disorders usually have an importance that is undervalued to health and mortality.